Front of the Class: The Allegory of the Cave

In The Allegory of the Cave, Plato stated that though man can think and speak he does not have the “awareness of his realm of Forms” (Cohen, 2006). In the Allegory, Plato explained this by symbolically using prisoners in a cave who are unable to turn their heads. These prisoners are facing a wall and all that they could see is this wall. But behind the prisoners there is a big fire burning and between the prisoners and the fire is a bridge. Thus the prisoners cannot see the objects passing in the bridge and all they could see are shadows and all that they can hear are echoes. Since this is their given situation, the prisoners do not have the full grasp of what is real. They would think that the shadows are real. For instance, if a man carrying a jar passes the bridge, the prisoners would say “I see a jar” even though what he actually sees is just a shadow of the jar and not the jar itself.

In the lines, “And if they could talk to one another, don’t you think they’d suppose that the names they used applied to the things they see passing before them?” Plato means that the prisoners may have been even wrong in the names they give to the objects since they cannot turn their heads and have no real knowledge of the object. Here, what Plato actually means is that the “names” we give to the physical objects are simply names of things that we cannot fully see or fully grasps.

Then according to Plato, once the prisoners are released only then can they see the objects. Upon seeing they now have a realistic “grasp” on it because now they realized how wrong they were in their assumption that what they saw on the wall as the object. According to Plato man can come to grasp the forms in his mind by “doing something like turning the head” and seeing the cause of the shadow (Cohen, 2006). This is actually the aim of Plato for his allegory.

The Allegory of the cave is not a proof but a mere illustration of Plato’s view (The Analogy, n.d.) The general idea is that if man concentrates only on the things that are visible to him, he will never know that these things may be mere reflections of something more significant and real. For a man to see these things he must turn his head around and grasp or apprehend the forms. Since others have no idea on the real form of things, once he tells this to other men, he will be considered as mad. Thus according to Plato, education is not telling the truth to others but showing others that they are looking at the wrong things and then “turning their heads” to the real form.

However simply educating others is not the end of acquiring true intelligence. In The Allegory of the Cave Plato also discussed about the Divided Line. In the Divided Line, Plato has two worlds, the sensible world and the intelligible world. In the sensible world there are two divisions, the illusions, or the shadows in the cave, and the belief, of the real object in the cave. But after these two divisions, there are also the next divisions which are reason and intelligence (Hooker, 1996). Thus man can achieve intelligence by going through the Divided Line. In the case of the prisoners, the illusion is the shadows, then by turning around and seeing the jar, the prisoner has come to his “belief” of the existence of the jar. Then, let’s say by examining it, he will come to “reason”. This is the same as using mathematical postulates. For the prisoner, this is knowing that the jar is not only the real thing but it also shaped has its distinct shape, size, etc. Then to finally reach intelligence, the prisoner must see the source of light that illuminates the object or the thing that makes it visually real.

In The Allegory of the Cave, Plato described the general dilemma man is at and a proposed a solution to that dilemma. According to Plato the world as we know it is not the real world but a mere poor representation of it and that the real world thus can only be grasped intellectually. Plato suggested that education is directing the minds of the students to what is important in order for them to grasp the truth (Kreis, 2004). Plato believed that the universe is good and that those who have learned to grasp the truth, the enlightened ones, is responsible for the society (Kreis, 2004). The Allegory of the Cave’s fundamental point is that the prisoners do not see reality or the true things (Brians, 1999). They only see shadows or representations of the real objects. They thus live in their self created “illusions” and refuse enlightenment, as seen in students resting their education. At the end, Plato stated that, “education is not a process of putting knowledge into empty minds, but of making people realize that which they already know (Brians, 1999)”.

In today’s world man is still as ignorant of things as the prisoners of Plato. Some argued that science liberates man from illusions. Man now is composed of molecules and atoms instead of mere flesh and blood. This understanding has brought us to a certain degree of understanding of ourselves that we know that penicillin is better than taking a witch potion. However it may be argued that man still lives in the shadows.

It would seem that the more one knows the more there are questions that must be answered. These questions are the shadows that we see today. Man is still as ignorant as before about the ways of life and about what is real. With the advancement of science man has become more confused as to what is real and what is not. For instance the debate about what constitutes in an unborn child is something that has caused so much debate and difference in belief. Even with man seeing the beating of the heart of the fetus he has not seen where life begins.

Moreover, liberal thinking is another shadow man sees today and this distorts his sense of what is real. Again continuing with the example of the life of the unborn child, the liberals now see it as their right to decide the fate of the unborn child. They see that they have the right to abort the child should they decide. This is the shadow that they see.

The true picture is that abortion is simply the easy way out or the tendency of the society to allow social and personal irresponsibility and moral decadence to thrive which in turn creates further problem for the society.

The root of the problem is not the presence of the unwanted child but the social decadence that creates irresponsible men and women who have sex without thinking of the consequence of their action and who does it unprotected. This in turn opens up opportunity for abortion. Moreover if abortion is not done then an unwanted child is then born. This child will be more or less be neglected and in turn will be another problem for the society. In general though what people see is the liberated idea or the “right” of the woman over her body. This is the shadow and like Plato’s prisoners, the society’s heads are fixed on the wall. Thus man today is in the same sense, prisoner in the cave of shadows.

Moreover, man is far from reaching intelligence. With the many scientific breakthroughs man seems to be more confused and lost than ever. This may simply mean that science in itself could be the shadow. That it is a mere illusion and man’s focus on it simply deters him from seeing what the real picture is. Imagine, man has gone to the moon and yet man has not been through himself; or else why would man commit suicide, do terrorist acts, rape young children and go into deadly wars against each other.

Politics, defined as is the process by which groups of people make decisions (Politics, 2007), could be another form of shadow. More specifically wrong politics is another shadow. This was demonstrated by the many followers of Hitler and other dictators over the ages. Why else would someone follow a mad man to commit such atrocities if he was not blinded by false promises from wrong politics? This is just one of the examples of how politics could lead man unwittingly to ruin.

Works Cited

Brians, Paul , et. al. 1999. Plato: The Allegory of the Cave, from

The Republic Reading About the World, Volume 1.

Washington State University Pullman 99164-5020. Retrieved 11 September 2007 from

http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~wldciv/world_civ_reader/world_civ_reader_1/plato.html

Cohen, S. Mark. 2006. The Allegory of the Cave.